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So, the NFL has arrived at its conference championship games, and the sport's preeminent position is pretty much in the condition everyone thought it would be.

Atlanta's Matt Ryan came into the league as a No. 1 overall draft pick. Baltimore's Joe Flacco is a first-rounder, too. New England's Tom Brady isn't, of course, but he might be the best quarterback ever to play the game, so give him a pass on that.

And San Francisco's Colin Kaepernick is...

Wait a second, how did Colin Kaepernick get here? In so many ways, the story of maybe the NFL's biggest weekend of the year will be the quarterback so few people know a lot about. But we might want to learn. Because there are so many respected analysts and former players - led by no less a quarterback than Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton - who think what Kaepernick can do from the position might transform the NFL.

New fad

The so-called "Pistol Offense" has become all the rage in the NFL this season thanks to the work of star Washington rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III, who threw for 3,200 yards and ran for 815 in the regular season, accounting for 27 touchdowns and leading the Redskins to their first NFC East title since 1999.

Seattle used it with rookie Russell Wilson, too, riding it into the playoffs. But the 49ers used it best with Kaepernick, rejuvenating their season after handing the starting quarterback job to Kaepernick in November and building the offense around him.

Since taking over for former first-rounder and longtime 49ers starter Alex Smith, Kaepernick has thrown for 1,814 yards, rushed for 415 more and accounted for 15 touchdowns.

The Pistol is new to the NFL. But it isn't new. It has been around more than a decade, and Nevada coach Chris Ault actually made it famous when he began implementing it with the Wolfpack in 2004.

Kaepernick's college coach: Chris Ault at Nevada.

The NFL has had trouble adapting to the Pistol, and no team has gotten torched by it quite like the Green Bay Packers in last week's divisional round. That's when Kaepernick authored perhaps the most impressive performance by any quarterback in the NFL in the last several months. He threw for 263 yards. He ran for an amazing 181 more, cutting large swaths through a helpless Packers defense.

That's the performance that convinced many: The Pistol, or the read-option, is the future in the NFL. It just gives defenses too much to worry about, too many dimensions to ponder in a matter of seconds.

So, why didn't it convince Kaepernick's opposite number?

"I think the league is cyclical," Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers told ESPN Wisconsin. "Things have come back around that have been used 20, 30 years ago. But this, too, I think, will pass. Some of the pistol, read-option stuff will eventually pass.

"Now it might not be for 10 more years. The athletic quarterback, I don't think, is going to pass at all."

Offense in cycles

Is Rodgers correct? If so, why won't the read-option, pistol formation, what-ever-you-want-to-call-it offense work long-term? For starters, Rodgers probably does have this pegged. People are acting like quarterbacks who can run are a revelation, when really, they've been around forever.

Tarkenton's entire highlight reel consists of him making throws downfield while he sprints away from defenders. Steve Young took the 49ers to the Super Bowl, and himself to Canton, by picking up chunks of yards with his legs when pass coverage just isn't breaking down. The most infuriating part for defenders about watching John Elway lead the Broncos is that he'd be unafraid to do the same.

The running ability of guys like Kaepernick and Griffin and Wilson will only help them going forward in that regard. But will they be able to do so if they're forced into a more conventional offense? You get the feeling that Kaepernick is playing as much against time this weekend as he is against the Falcons. You get the feeling he's trying to get the Pistol as far as it can go in the NFL before the NFL can catch up to it. Because the NFL always catches up to the little tricks.

Defending the future

Flash back to 2008, and another fad formation derived from the college ranks. The Miami Dolphins brought the Wildcat formation to the NFL, with running back Ronnie Brown lining up in the shotgun as quarterback, reading the defense with the option to either throw or run.

Sound like the "read-option?" Essentially, it was. Because after Brown revitalized the Dolphins with that formation that season, pretty much every team attempted to put a Wildcat package into place. After all, if nobody could stop the Dolphins in 2008, wouldn't 2009 be the year every team could try it?

NFL defensive coordinators are sometimes pretty slow on the uptake. But give them a season's worth of film and an offseason to break it down, and that kind of offense gets shut down pretty quickly the next time around. Just four seasons after Ronnie Brown and the Dolphins took the NFL by storm, name the team that implemented the Wildcat offense with even a modicum of success in 2012.

In fact, the New York Jets had the offensive coordinator (Tony Sparano) who brought the Wildcat to Miami, and the quarterback (Tim Tebow) many felt to be the perfect Wildcat quarterback. And they famously were reluctant to even attempt running it.

The read-option will go the same way. Or, at least, history says it will.

The problem with the so-called fad offenses is that they force defenses to figure out how to defend a single facet of the game, be it the pass game in the run-and-shoot or the person taking the snap in the Wildcat. The most effective offenses, the ones that last, are the ones that force defenses to learn how to defend spaces. It's difficult to deny an offense the 15-yard out, the deep post, the fly pattern up the sideline, the flat and the big tight end on a 20-yard in-cut when the quarterback can make all of those throws. That's why the quarterbacks who can stand tall in the pocket and pick apart a defense will always stand the test of time. They make defenses defend the greatest amount of area in the shortest amount of time.

Maybe, Kaepernick and Grifin and Wilson have the type of arm and pocket presense to become that type of player, the timeless quarterback who has a second, almost unstoppable dimension to their games. But what we do know, right now, is that they're excelling because defenses simply haven't caught up to the scheme they run.

Maybe, Colin Kaepernick will ride the read-option and the Pistol formation to a Super Bowl championship this year, and if so, it will be a fun story authored by a quarterback in a fun system to watch. But the guess here is that the Super Bowl in the future will look a lot like it has in the past.

Because while the quarterback in San Francisco is the one the NFL world is talking about, wouldn't you really rather have the one in New England under center for your team next year?

DONNIE COLLINS is a columnist for The Sunday Times. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com.

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